


Aparejo

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Category: I Juan de Pareja – Elizabeth Borton de Treviño
Genre: 17th Century, Be the First 2019, Drabble Collection, Gen, Painting, Slavery, Spain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 13:27:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18550699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: 'The Spanish term for ground layer, "aparejo", is used in the sense of "parejo", which means even, smooth and uniform, to allude to the characteristics a surface prepared for painting should possess.'  (María Dolores Gayo and Maite Jover de Celis, 2010)The painter Juan de Pareja was born a slave, in the early years of the seventeenth century, in Spain. He served the painter Don Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez: his manumission papers lie in the Archivio di Stato in Rome, and ten of his paintings survive. Elizabeth Borton de Trevino's novel of his life,I, Juan de Pareja, won the Newberry medal in 1966.





	Aparejo

> **1\. Stretched Canvas**  
> 

Dozing on the terrace under the lemon trees, I am once again the slave-boy dragging his feet outside Pacheco's studio, longing for the merest glimpse of a master at work. Yet I am also a man in that same studio, warmed by the gold of our Seville sunshine. The King's chair is framed in velvet with the same dark and beautiful glow as my mother's smile, and I am painting, free and fearless, from a palette loaded with colour. I recognise children laughing, although Paquita never knew my children's children, and it is little Toto who snuffles at my feet.

> **2\. Ground layer**  
> 

Because my beloved master loved me also, I was content, and unless it be in the matter of needing to paint, which was forbidden, I would have said that I was a happy slave. It was Lolis who wore her anger in the flash of her eyes, as martial as an avenging angel. Yet afterwards I felt every moment, a grinding down, over and over. To be owned, as a writing desk or a mule, never to step in another's shadow, painting in secret - yet, would I have become a painter, if I were not first a slave? I do not know.

> **3\. Size**  
> 

On the day my master said to me, "I have no slave," everything seemed fresh and new to me, the candlight on the figure of the Christ, the texture of the velvet curtains the mistress drew against the dark, the dear joy of Lolis' face. And although there have been days since when all light has been lost to me, I have never lost the memory of such shining brightness. I see it now in Lolis' eyes, in the merry smile of my friend and brother Bartolomé, and the laughter of our children and grand-children, our lives woven like cloth-of-gold.

> **4\. Priming Layer**  
> 

In his later days, Master primed his canvas with paler shades. His last paintings, for the wedding of the Infanta, were a marvel of purity and light. But when I was young, his canvas was layered with ochres, the reds and browns of our earthly minerals, deep-shadowed and grave. It was thus when I first began to paint, and when in joy and fear I created my black Madonna, so to her skin that dark beginning gave depth and lustre. Yet I was afraid. It was Bartolomé who saw beauty alone, promising Our Lady's love shines through all things equally.

> **5\. Paint**  
> 

There is joy in this small garden, with its lemon trees and vines, its potted nutmeg tree and its Moorish rose, and the sunshine is a golden warmth to lay against these old bones. Yet even as I sit here, I hear the voices from the studio, where young Diego has set the windows ajar. Susanna's stray puppy knocked her palette from her hand and she is incandescent in his defence; the twins sing _villancico_ , in uncommon harmony.

My master said, the painter lays colour down shade by shade, until the whole is seen. Here, we have made ourselves whole.

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> I am obviously and seriously indebted to María Dolores Gayo and Maite Jover de Celis, whose _The evolution of preparations for painting on canvas in sixteenth and seventeeth century Spain_ (in translation, Boletín del Museo del Prado, Tomo XXVIII n.º 46, pp. 39-59, 2010) I came across while researching Juan de Pareja. It was inspirational.


End file.
